Imaginary Crush
by The Ice Box
Summary: A young developer realizes that imagination has a power she never could imagine.
1. Chapter 1

Imaginary Crush

A young developer discovers that knowledge and imagination have a disturbing power that she never could imagine.

_Opening narration._

It's 7:15 am, getting ready for long working hours, patches, updates, changes, errors and pressure are part of her daily life as well as being completely unaware of her own beauty and talent. Meet Anna Duval, a beautiful, young and naïve programmer whose recovery spirit after a painful experience would lead her into a very strange path.

Anna got up, took a shower and was getting ready for work; she was the type of girl who would be considered unusual since she looked like anything but a software developer. Her red-brownish perfectly symmetric curls, pink cheeks and smile made her outstand. Computers were her passion

And that's how she met Spencer Richardson, the love of her life..online. She didn't care if all of her friends disapproved the idea, or if Spencer worked as a pizza boy (which she had trouble to accept since he had really random schedules, stayed until late closing the store and never really answered his phone when she needed to hear from him), barely got his GED, she still loved him. Even though they had been talking for just a year, they felt like if it had been decades already. And they got to see eachother twice, for about a month each time.

Spencer always told Anna how he couldn't wait until they were finally husband and wife.

So she arrived to work, even though she was a great console application developer, she worked as a software tester, the money was decent enough and it was the kind of job where she didn't have to talk much or be very active since her verbal skills were really poor. And her social life was limited to Eric, her brother who was a brilliant psychology student, frustrated musician (basically he did it more as a hobby) and to a few of her coworkers.

She said hi to Adrian, one of her coworkers at the testing department. Adrian had a very kind smile. "Sup Adrian"- she said.

She sat and worked. Her work pretty much consisted in testing one specific line of business platform software that allowed users to view, modify and analyze data for decision making, make sure a particular bug was fixed or finding new bugs and reporting them. But that Friday in particular Anna wasn't feeling so happy, especially because she had an argument with Spencer and even though he reassured how much he loved her and asked Anna to start applying for a foreign fiancé visa, he spent days without contacting her and she was even forced to call his grandparent's house to hear from him.

"Anna Banana…..I think you should just let him go", said Adrian.

"Shut up Adrian, I love this guy and well, he's different….he's got something special …like if he was out of this world" she said.


	2. Chapter 2

After ten hours of work, she came back home. Had a sausage biscuit for dinner and waited for Spencer to log in, text or call. So there she was, sitting on her bed with her laptop in front of her, waiting for a videocall that she would never get.

She went to bed all worried, but with the thought of Spencer's last words "Don't forget to call the embassy to start the marriage process".

The next day she woke up hoping to get a text from him apologizing, or maybe an online message in their favorite social network site, where they met. But she got nothing and he wouldn't answer his phone. Anna's worst flaw was probably the fact that it was so hard for her to calm down, whenever things didn't happen the way she expected them too, she got all unsettled.

"Alright, there's nothing left for me to do but keep trying.." she said, and that's what she did. She called Spencer's phone for at least 10 times that day, until he finally answered.

"Hey baby, guess what, I finally called the embassy and gosh….it's not a long process like we thought it would be but it's a whole bunch of paperwork, I gotta get a new birth certificate and even bloodtests!"-Said Anna.

"Heh, I can imagine"-Said Spencer, in a very unusual tone.

-"Baby, what's wrong?" asked Anna.

-"I don't know…." replied Spencer

-"Maybe you're just stressed cause of work.."

-"It's not work Anna, it's us….I don't know what's going on anymore, I feel confused and I need a break"

-"Is there someone else?..." she asked

-"Yes" replied Spencer abruptly

-"NO, NO, please don't do this to me, please baby, I'm begging you, I love you, you're the most important part of my life and we're going to get married like you said. ...OMG, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME…WHO THE HELL IS SHE?"

-"She has a lot of problems and….well…I gotta help her"

-"Spencer, don't do this to me…" begged Anna, crying.

"Goodbye Anna"

The next few days were hell for Anna. All of her dreams were shattered; he was the center of her universe, her first love. She showed up to work looking like a dizzy zombie, she couldn't focus on the stuff she was supposed to do. To her, it was all a lucid nightmare.

And after she told Adrian, he suggested her to get over him, use this time for herself and even make him jealous.

"Make him jealous…" she said.

So she decided to use her CAD (computer assisted design) skills to make Spencer jealous. Find some gorgeous eyes online, with a beautiful smile like Adrian's, the guy next door's abs…voila..."Spencer, when you see this, you'll need diaper"- She said giggling.

-"I'm glad I get to see you smiling" said Adrian.

Then Anna explained how his magic idea was going to make her get Spencer back, just like a kid explaining a grown up some childish game. Adrian disagreed.

-"So you think that making Spencer jealous by using a fake profile, pretending to be a fake admirer will make him want to date you again?" asked Adrian

-"I know it will, when Spencer sees how this new guy pretty much spams my comments section with "Hey beautiful" and "I can't wait to see you again", he'll definitely be jealous and beg me to take him back" said Anna

Adrian only smiled and hugged her. He felt weird.

The next few days all Anna did was pretty much post herself comments using this new guy's name "Dylan Caverly". And go to see her psychiatrist. As Eric saw that Anna's situation wasn't getting any better, he decided to talk to one of his teachers, and managed to schedule an appointment for Anna. She was on 3 different types of medication which made her really dizzy and confused, showed up to work all "high", everything looked like it was on slow motion, and even lost 4 pounds in a week. She also noticed she kept receiving posts from "Dylan" and the weird part was that it was mostly stuff that she didn't remember posting to herself. She also had recurrent and bizarre dreams about Dylan telling her how much he needed her. But she blamed the medicine.


	3. Chapter 3

After a week, her condition kept worsening. She sat on her bed. She kept losing more and more weight. Eric warned her about the mediation's side effects and the consequences of a potential withdrawal if she stopped taking them, but her answer was just mocking him in a voice that sounded nothing like Eric's.

"Maybe you just need to give yourself some time, you can't expect Dr. Li and the medication to do all the work you know, you gotta make an effort and work towards recovering", said Eric.

"It's not as easy as you think it is" said Anna.

"Weeping and starving yourself are not going to bring Spencer back. All I've seen you doing for the last two weeks is crying and going online, how are you suppose to recover? You don't eat, you barely get any sleep, I have to beg you to take your medication, you generally look distracted. The guy's a douche, he does not deserve you." said Eric

"I'm sorry" said Anna crying.

"I am sorry too, we will make it through this, I promise. Hey, I will get us something to eat. How does magic salad sound for dinner?, how about you take a nap and I'll call you when I got the food" said Eric trying to cheer her up.

Anna nodded. She grabbed her computer and logged into that site again. Dylan's posts kept randomly appearing in her profile and many of her pictures. She still had nothing from Spencer though. No messages, no texts, no posts. Funny how all of a sudden she was no longer important. All those online conversations, random calls to say "I miss you" and "Have a good day", future plans.

Her eyes kept feeling heavy but she blamed it on the medication. So she decided to just lay down for a couple of minutes, trying to analyze where she went wrong, maybe she was a little bit too unintelligent, a little bit too chubby for the modern beauty standards, a little bit too "ethnic" perhaps. Her eyes kept feeling heavier and heavier.

OUCH .."yelled Anna"

Last time she fell out of her bed was years ago, when she was seven and even then she had an excuse. But this time ..it was different. As she was still on the floor, she felt something weird, her bedroom's walls started to look like if they were melting, she slowly stood up, the way she saw herself sleeping on her bed completely shocked her.

"I'm here, how is this physically possible?.." she said

"You're safe" ..said a voice.

She was motionless and speechless. There were no words to describe the current situation. What was "Dylan" doing there? in her room.

"You're not..."

"Real?"..

"Well, I am...and all of this is..just".."Eric said that"..Anna felt lost for words.

"I am as real as you want me to be Anna. I'd never hurt and I want you to know that no matter how much you try to blame yourself over this, this was Spencer's decision, not yours. It was about time that he realized that you are too good for him. You're wonderful and he was not able to realize that" said Dylan.

"What is really happening? How is this even possible" asked Anna nervously.

"You need me, and I will not leave you" said Dylan.

All of a sudden she heard a beeping. She opened her eyes and realized she found herself back in her bed with a sore knee. The whole thing was starting to not make sense at all (Which did not surprise her, nothing was making much sense to her those last few days), what just happened with Dylan seemed to be a dream, but why was her knee hurt? The notification sound in her laptop could have been real though. She decided to check her messages. She couldn't believe she had one new message.

"It could be from Spencer! she said" She opened and couldn't believe what she was reading:

This is going to be weird, as I don't know you, and I know you probably think very little of me (as the slutty one and what not) but I think the only way I can understand what's going on is to talk to you. And I want you to know the truth because having learned more about him, I don't know how much of that you got.

Yes, I slept with Spencer on the first night, but in my defense, he told me you were over and he was looking for a relationship. The way he made it sound was the only way I could have him, was if I made that plunge and showed my commitment by sleeping with him. Contrary to his belief, I would've never done it if I had known you two were still together. In fact over the time he had been playing me up to sex, I hadn't responded at all, because I thought he was still with you. The night we finally did it, he even asked me why I hadn't made a move yet. He initiated everything, and now is throwing it all back in my face. I found out the next day, by accident, that he had still been with you and only tried to break up with you by telling you we'd had sex. I don't know how much of that is true anymore.

I don't know what lies he told us about each other, or even what lies he told you, but I know the ones he told me; like over and over he would never hurt me or be like all the guys I'd known before, who were selfish and only wanted sex and had hurt me. But that's exactly what he had done. He told me he could love me and take me for who I was but the longer we are together the more the tries to push me to be someone he knows I can't be. He says he knows what he wants that will make him happy and he can find that, that everyone had a perfect person for them, and that I'm immature to believe that isn't true and someone always has to compromise. On the other hand he wants me to compromise and he won't give the slightest inch. He says if I love him and want him enough I'll do it – but I don't see how that's fair for me.

Listen I know you don't want to hear all this. I'm just so confused right now. I know he's gotten back in touch with you and he says he can have you back if he wanted. I wanted to hear from you the truth on that. Could he have you back? Do you even want him back? I don't know what to do. I care about him but I don't like knowing he's trying to play us both of us at the same time, thinking only of himself, to end up with his best chance. I feel like he's trying to keep us both open as options til he sees what happen, and I want him to just pick one. I think that;s the only fair way for everyone. If you reallt don't want him, I'll do my best to go for it and make him happy. But if you do, please just tell me, and I'll step anyway. I'm so sorry for even doing this is the first place. I didn't know, or I wouldn't have done this to you. I'm sorry I believed him and thought he wanted anything more that night than just sex.

I'm sorry

Tracy.


End file.
